Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

My name is Mrs. Steele and I'm going to be guiding you through your music lesson today.

In today's lesson we're going to be learning all about improvising and the minor pentatonic scale.

But before we begin, please take a moment to find the listening example that doesn't feature in today's video.

There's a teacher guidance slide at the beginning of the slide deck to help you to do this.

Press pause now if you need to find that listening example.

Are you ready? Okay, let's go.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to play the minor pentatonic scale and know that this scale can be used for the basis of jazz improvisation.

Here are the keywords that we'll need in our learning together today.

Minor pentatonic scale.

The five notes, la, do, re, mi, and so, arranged in an ascending, going up, or descending order.

Improvisation.

Creative, in-the-moment musical composition.

Jazz.

A musical genre that emerged from African American communities in New Orleans in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, characterized by improvisation.

And genre, music belonging to a shared tradition or style.

Let's begin by warming up so that we're ready to make music together.

Before every music lesson, it's important to warm up our bodies, our voices, and our minds.

Warming and stretching our vocal cords safely and gently helps us to prevent injury to our voice and it develops our vocal strength.

Warming up is also a great opportunity to develop lots of other musical skills, like singing and playing as part of an ensemble.

We'll start by warming up our bodies with these whole body exercises.

Warming up our whole body releases tension and helps us to find a good singing posture.

Using this backing track, choose a leader and copy their stretches and movements, and there's lots of different ideas for movements on this slide here.

Press pause to choose a leader and to get ready, then meet me back here and I'll play the backing track.

Are you ready, everyone? Here's the music.

Watch and copy the leader's movements.

(bright jazz music) (bright jazz music continues) (bright jazz music continues) (bright jazz music continues) (bright jazz music continues) (bright jazz music continues) Next, we warm up our face muscles.

There are two different ways we're going to try doing this.

The first one is to place your tongue at the front of your mouth, between your teeth and your lips.

Then rotate your tongue around your mouth like you're searching for leftovers, like this.

Then you're going to gently release your mouth, and using your fingers or your knuckles gently massage the hinge all the way down to your chin.

So the hinge is this bit.

All the way down.

Warming up our face muscles gently will help us to hold less tension in our jaw and in our neck.

Press pause to try both of those face warmups where you are.

Next, we need to complete some breathing exercises.

When our breathing is considered and controlled, we're helping to protect the muscles around our voice.

Join in with the breathing exercises in this video.

Make sure that you're keeping your shoulders even even as you raise your arms, and check that your chest feels broad and open after our breathing exercises.

Here comes the video, join in.

Join in with these breathing exercises.

Copy me.

(instructor blowing) (instructor vocalizing) Tongue twisters like this one help to warm up our mouths and improve our articulation.

Join in with this tongue twister, it's called "Grow Bananas." Then check that you feel energetic and focused with a mouth that feels warm, stretched, and ready to go.

Here's "Grow Bananas," join in.

♪ Ready, steady, off we go ♪ ♪ Grow bananas, grow, grow bananas ♪ ♪ Peel bananas, peel, peel bananas ♪ ♪ Slice bananas, slice, slice bananas ♪ ♪ Eat bananas, eat, eat bananas ♪ ♪ Go bananas, go, go bananas ♪ (drumming continues) ♪ Sleep bananas, sleep, sleep bananas ♪ ♪ Shh ♪ <v Mrs. Steele>Let's listen to this new song.

</v> It's called "Five Notes in a Pentatonic." Feel the pulse and tap a gentle beat as you listen.

We need a good sense of pulse to perform together in an ensemble, so this is an important skill to practice.

Here comes the music.

Listen and tap a gentle beat.

(bright music) ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ ♪ We can improvise, make our own tunes ♪ ♪ We can play what we want ♪ ♪ Starting at the bottom then we move up to the top ♪ ♪ And hear the notes become the same as before ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ <v Mrs. Steele>Now let's listen again.

</v> This time, trace the contour of the pitch with your hand as the melody moves up and down.

This helps because when we sing our intonation, or the accuracy of our pitching notes, is very important.

Listen again and this time trace the contour of the pitch with your finger as you listen.

(bright music) ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ ♪ We can improvise, make our own tunes ♪ ♪ We can play what we want ♪ ♪ Starting at the bottom then we move up to the top ♪ ♪ And hear the notes become the same as before ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ <v ->Let's listen another time.

</v> This time, can you feel that the song is in 4-time? Count to four in your head and clap on the offbeats, or the weak beats, two and four.

One two three four, one two three four.

(continues clapping) Here comes the music.

Feel that it's in 4-time and gently clap the beats two and four.

(bright music) ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ ♪ We can improvise, make our own tunes ♪ ♪ We can play what we want ♪ ♪ Starting at the bottom then we move up to the top ♪ ♪ And hear the notes become the same as before ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ <v ->As we finish our warmups,</v> it's important to check in with your body.

Check that you're sitting or standing tall, that you feel focused and able to concentrate, that your voice feels warm and ready to join in, and that you're ready for music.

Great, let's keep going.

We're going to learn about the minor pentatonic scale.

Listen again to our new song, "Five Notes in a Pentatonic." (bright music) ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ ♪ We can improvise, make our own tunes ♪ ♪ We can play what we want ♪ ♪ Starting at the bottom then we move up to the top ♪ ♪ And hear the notes become the same as before ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ <v ->This song has a different feel</v> to other pentatonic songs we've learned before.

This is because this song uses a scale called the minor pentatonic.

Minor is the organization of notes around la, and in the word pentatonic, penta comes from the Greek meaning five and tonic means tone or note.

Let's have a quick check-in with our learning so far.

How many notes are in a pentatonic scale? Is it A, two; B, three; C, four; or D, five? Press pause to talk about your answer, or you could write it down on a whiteboard.

Here comes the answer.

There are five notes in a pentatonic scale, the answer's D.

Well done if you remembered that.

Remember, in the word pentatonic, penta comes from the Greek, which means five.

The minor pentatonic scale uses la, do, re, mi, and so.

Let's have a go at singing the minor pentatonic, ascending and descending.

Watch this video and join in.

♪ Ready, steady, off we go ♪ ♪ La, do, re, mi, so ♪ ♪ So, mi, re, do, la ♪ <v ->Let's listen to "Five Notes in a Pentatonic" again.

</v> This time, what can you notice about the shape of the first five notes? Listen carefully.

What did you notice? Did you spot that the five notes ascend the minor pentatonic scale? This ascending pattern is heard often throughout the song.

♪ Five notes in a pent ♪ Well done if you spotted that.

This song only uses the notes of the minor pentatonic scale.

Let's have a go at singing the song, internalizing the tonality and character of the minor pentatonic scale.

Sing along this time.

(bright music) ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ ♪ We can improvise, make our own tunes ♪ ♪ We can play what we want ♪ ♪ Starting at the bottom then we move up to the top ♪ ♪ And hear the notes become the same as before ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ We go up and we go down ♪ ♪ Five notes in a pentatonic ♪ ♪ What a pattern we have found ♪ <v ->Did you manage to internalize the sounds</v> of the minor pentatonic scale? Could you pitch the notes correctly? Were you able to hear the repeated pattern of the rising pentatonic scale? ♪ Five notes in a pent ♪ And how would you describe the character of the song and its scale? You could press pause now to share your ideas about that, or think about it in your thinking voice.

Now let's move on to learning about playing the minor pentatonic scale.

Jazz musicians sometimes use the minor pentatonic scale as an inspiration for improvisation.

This scale has its roots in African American music, particularly the blues, and is often heard in genres such as jazz, rock, and pop.

Watch this video of the composer Richard Barnard improvising using the minor pentatonic scale.

Here it comes.

(bright piano music) Now let's watch this video to hear how Richard Barnard describes improvisation.

Here it is.

<v ->Improvisation is used in jazz and other music,</v> and it basically means making something up on the spot, in the moment, having an idea and playing with it, playing around with it.

So it might be using some notes (Richard plays piano) and then trying to make up a tune as you play (Richard plays piano) using those notes, and that's improvisation.

<v ->It's time find today's listening example.

</v> We're going to listen to the jazz standard "Sonnymoon for Two" by saxophonist Sonny Rollins.

The head, or the theme of this piece is repeated six times before the improvisations begin.

The theme uses only the notes of the minor pentatonic scale descending all the way down, followed by a smaller rise and falling shape.

Press pause to find and listen to this listening example.

It's time for another check-in with our learning.

Can you remember what is improvisation? Is it A, rehearsing to improve a performance? B, creative, in-the-moment musical composition? Is it C, a musical genre that emerged from African American communities? Or D, playing the piano in a certain style? Press pause to choose your answer.

What is improvisation? Here comes the answer.

It's B, well done if you remembered that.

Improvisation is creative, in-the-moment musical composition.

In order to improvise stylistically using the minor pentatonic scale, first we must learn to play it.

In this song, la is D, do is F, re is G, mi is A, and so is going to be C.

We call this the D minor pentatonic scale.

And here are the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale.

Look carefully.

Notice where the notes move up by step or by leap.

The minor pentatonic has a leap between notes 1 and 2, and between notes 4 and 5.

It's time for a check-in with our learning.

What notes are in the D minor pentatonic scale? Is it A, B, or C? Press pause to choose your answer.

Which one of these shows the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale? What do you think? Here comes the answer.

It's B, well done if you spotted that.

Here we have D, F, G, A, and C.

First, let's find and play the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale on our pitched percussion.

Start from the low D and then play the notes in order, first ascending and then descending.

Take care to notice where the notes move up by step or leap.

Remember, we've got those two leaps to watch out for in the D minor pentatonic scale.

Press pause to practice playing it where you are on your pitched percussion.

How did it go? Could you play the D minor pentatonic scale on your instrument? Did you hear the leap between notes 1 and 3 and 4 and 5? Well done, now you know that the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale are D, F, G, A, and C, and you can play them on your pitched percussion.

We've come to the end of our learning today all about improvisation and the minor pentatonic scale.

But before we go, let's take a moment to think about everything we've been learning today.

We know that the minor pentatonic scale is a scale often used in musical genres such as jazz and blues, and we know that the minor pentatonic scale is made up of five notes and has a different tonality to the major pentatonic scale.

We know that the minor pentatonic scale uses la, do, re, mi, and so, and in the D minor pentatonic scale, this is D, F, G, A, and C, and we can play that too.

And finally, we know that improvisation is creative, in-the-moment musical composition.

Fantastic work today, everyone.

I can't wait to see you again soon to guide you through another music lesson.

Bye, everyone.